She ran with her feet like blades,
attacking all her fears so close to her
at the same time they attacked herself.
Jarring spikes clunking into reasons
and leaden walls, hollow nothings
she’d whispered unknowingly

since the beginning of time, as far as her
body could logically sense. Something, she,
had to be real though nothing was. Her
fears seemed real in a dazing sense, and this cage that
spun a web of dream that wasn’t a dream, or sleep
or slumber. Vapour. Stillness. She attacked the

stillness with her blade like feet, in an escape that
had never begun and a run that would never end.
Marathons even were a dream. All was endless
and that was okay. But cages, bell jars,
bubbles needed to be popped. They wouldn’t
pop and she carried on trying.

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones